I watched with horror as my brother led the gentlemen to the big raffia mat underneath the tree. For a few seconds I was fascinated by the effort of the european as he struggled to sit gracefully cross-legged on the mat, then an alarm in my mind went off that took me back to my immediate problem. For lack of knowing a proper way to get out of it, I did what most boys my age did...run.

I ran and ran until I was out of breath and my feet ached, then I found a stone and sat down to catch my breath.

I looked around my surroundings and realised that I had never ventured as far in the direction I took. Convinced that I was a safe distance from home, I relaxed and began to doze off, occasionally jumping from the scuffle of a rodent or the movement of critters on my legs.

As the day went by, I began to fully see the folly of my actions. I realised that a delayed punishment was even worse than one carried out on time. I dozed off under the cool breeze of the tree and later woke up thirsty and very hungry.

I missed my mother's gruel that I always carry in a sling gourd. I was musing about all the things I missed and decided to look for a wild fruit to satiate my hunger when I heard a movement so close I nearly jumped out of my skin. To my relief, it turned out to be Bayero.

"You will grow up to be a bad herdsman you know." He said squinting his eyes to get a better look at my face.

I defended my actions by blaming it on the stealthiness with which he had snuck up on me. "Besides, I don't plan on becoming a herdsman when I grow up." I added.

It was then I noticed his small herd grazing nearby, how they reached me with such stealth was beyond me. He asked me where my goats were and I told him I was alone which made him look me even more suspiciously. It was easy explaining my problems to him since he was the only one that knew of my school visitations.

"That is quite a fix you got yourself into." He said at last when I was done. "I still don't get your fixation with these schools. The children there are miserable, I can tell."

"How can you say that? You know nothing. " I protested.

"I know enough alright, they are forced to wear those clean shirts with the collar so high up it looked like a noose. That in itself is enough to make one uncomfortable...too clean if you ask me." He shook his head and made a face.

"I think it makes them look nice."

"Ha! Who will pick nice over freedom? I know I won't. " He said as he plucked a broad leaf from a nearby shrub and examined it, "You are going to get a beating for it, sure thing, and your father is a very serious man, and I heard those kinds are the ones whose beatings sting the most." He continued.

"And how are your observations suppose to help? You are only making it worse." I was on the verge of tears.

He brushed away a millipede that was making its way across his feet, "Nothing, just saying." He shrugged.

I could see how unaffected he was with my situation and it annoyed me to some degree.

"Now what do you plan on doing?" He asked.

I told him the initial plan was to run away but now am so hungry and thirsty. I omitted the part where I was afraid too.

"Here, I still have some of my gruel left." He said, as he handed me his guard and I hungrily popped the wooden stopper and gulped it down.

We sat there deliberating what course of action to take, all the while swatting insects from our bare legs.

In the end we decided that I go home and take my beatings like a sharo champion and carry on with my life.

Despite all the encouraging words I heard from Bayero, I felt jittery as soon as I stepped into the compound. It was late evening already and a bright fire was burning close to my father's hut. He, along with a friend and my two older brothers were seated around the fire. I felt the weight of their eyes on me as I approached and it took every ounce of bravado I possessed in me not to bolt out again, or it could be that I feared the bush at night, or it could have been both.

I picked a spot that had three people between me and my father and my heart skipped a beat when he asked me to come closer. Bademmo my brother, added more twigs making the fire bigger and at the same time illuminating every feature in my father's face.

I wasn't able to read his expression, I had no idea what a stretched facial muscle here or there meant, so I waited.

After what seemed like eternity, he spoke in a surprisingly calm tone.

"I suppose you are very much aware of why the Christians are here?" He used the word 'khado'.

I swallowed, of course they came to complain that I had been eavesdropping on their lessons and had disrupted a class on other occasions. But I kept that reply to myself and instead shook my head.

He was silent again, except for the sound twigs cracking in the fire. I stole a look at my two brothers to get a hint of where it was going but other than fact that their wide ears seemed to have doubled in size as the flames illuminated them, I couldn't pick a thing.

"They said you have been eavesdropping on school lessons, is that so?"

His friend nodded to affirm the allegations levelled against me and began to expertly pick between his teeth with a broomstick, and my brothers ears became even wider and erect with excitement.

"They came to ask me to allow you to join their school, what do you say to that?" I felt his gaze burning into my flesh and despite the cold night air, light beads of sweat began to form on my forehead.

How do I explain to him how good it will feel to dress smartly in crisp white shirt, navy blue shorts, white socks, and shoes! To be able to learn new things in the open without hiding? To have my very own shiny black slate. To study and be rewarded for my merits? The opportunities were endless, but I dared not say any of that to his face.

I therefore told him I had no such desire in hopes that my response will ferry me to safer shores. 

He nodded and poked the fire with a crooked stick.

A hollow feeling from the depth of my stomach swept over me as I had secretly harbored the dream of one day becoming a proper school boy. It was like an inflated balloon swaying gaily in the winds of my imagination and a prick was all it took to burst it into shards of soft plastic.

"They said if you went to school, you could learn better ways to help us look after our cattle, and increase their reproduction as well as milk production." He was looking at the fire as he said it, and right there I knew they had presented him with a proposal so sweet he could hardly resist.

The white man also said it will give you the chance to learn about their ailment and how to cure it...like those doctors in town, but a cow doctor."

I didn't know what that meant or if it was ever possible for one to become a cow doctor or any other beast doctor for that matter, and I clearly don't remember any class where such thing was taught, but if that will serve as a reason for me to go to school why not? I nodded.

You could tell he was conflicted from the way he stared at the flames with creases adorning his forehead. He was the decision maker, he held all the cards, as such the rest of us listened and nodded at the end of each sentence, with my brothers doing most of the nodding with their ears...more or less.

"But their school...it is a non Muslim school, but they are willing to make an exception." He continued.

Now, that was something I was quite aware of, in fact, I could at that time boast of memorising a few Biblical verses as well as some stories from the book of genesis.

It was indeed a big problem. We the Fulanis pride ourselves on being the descendants of Shehu Usman Dan Fodio, as such lay claim on being the pioneers of Islam in the north.

However, the near absence of a sedentary lifestyle made it hard to acquire proper Islamic education, as such the context of the religion in its entirety was lost on us. We therefore practiced with the little knowledge as our nomadic lifestyle could afford.

After a long silence, he finally spoke,

"I have decided. You will join the school, you will remember that you are a Bulankejo not Mbororo, and a Bulankejo cannot be anything but a Muslim, we have always been one and you will be no exception, understand?"

How the tables have turned! I couldn't sleep the rest of the night as I was both nervous and excited.

The next morning, my father dressed in a clean cotton boubou and matching flayed trouser and asked me go get ready. I washed my legs and face before donning my favorite boubou too. If I owned a trouser and shoes, I would have been more presentable. The women in my compound kept casting odd looks in my direction mostly out of confusion. My mother didnt say a word as she served me plain yoghurt as it was too early and the gruel was still cooking on the fire. 

That day marked a new phase in my life. I was relieved of the responsibilities of my herd except for weekends.

When it came the time for us to move, my father informed me that I will be staying with Bayero's family who at that time have adopted a semi-sedentary lifestyle, with the only movement done occasionally  by his older brothers and their small families.

It made me very happy for I had harboured a secret fear that the future of pursuing an education with our lifestyle was bleak.

Word came back that they had settled in Zaranda and it took me close to four years before I saw them again. During the weekends, I go herding with Bayero in the nearby bushes and he kept asking me names of things in English, or he will point at a tree and ask its name, or pick at random words, most of which do not translate in English. He will laugh and tell me they sounded funny, that he will rather work on his hausa than learn such funny language.

He became my best friend and confidant. I told him everything. From the boy I hated in my class, to the girl I secretly crushed on. I even told him when I started spelling my name differently. He was confused,

"Why will you prefer Bappa to Bappate?"

I told him it sounded less-villagey, so I opted for Bappa Hassan to Bappate Hassan.

"Don't you think it's disrespectful to be calling your father's name carelessly?" He sounded more confused.

"I don't know, everybody else has two names, some even three, so I guess it is the ways of the white man. " I tried to explain.

"Doesn't make it any less disrespectful." He said.

In the end, he agreed that Bappa sounded almost hausa, and because he thinks the Hausas are the coolest, he concluded that Bappa was cool too. But as for the surname, he never understood why it was needed in the first place.

In the evenings, we will make plans about our lives. I was going to get rich and live in the city and buy a car, he was going to have thousands of cattle, own a transistor radio, and settle in a village near the city where I lived. That way, we will grow old together albeit in different worlds.

Whenever my family moved, Bayero's father will inform me. Whenever he gets any information concerning them, (such as when my brother took a wife) he informed me too.

I took the entrance examination in 1973 and came out with flying colours. I was among the students honoured by the school. Bayero whistled and clapped from the crowd and later told me how proud he was of me. Afterwards, we left for the market and he took me to the local barber (wanzami) who also does body and facial tattoo and told me his gift to me was a tattoo.

He himself had several of which he was very proud of, along with piercing on both ears. He had been after me for as long as I could remember to get one as he said I won't look so plain again and maybe my crush will notice and fall in love with me. But I had declined, telling him my school frowns at such things. That day I had no excuse, so I chose a lizard tattoo and had it done on my arm. He paid twenty-five kobo for it and we left.

Two months later, I received an admission letter from Barewa college, Zaria. Bayero was happy that it was not as far as he had thought. He even promised to visit me if he finds himself in Zaria, which he never did.

My father who had been keeping tabs on my progress arrived a week later, he thanked his friend and even brought clothing materials for the women and some sweets and a day old parcel of hardened akara for the children. The next day we boarded a lorry and headed home. Home was at the time, in the outskirts of Wase in plateau state.

By the time I was in my last year in secondary school, my family had settled in  Zangon Kataf. It was then that my father decided to settle permanently and let my brothers carry on with the nomadic tradition. This decision was largely due to several factors; age, vast grassland in the area and an excellent climate.

One day, while I was home for the holidays, we got a surprise visitor. This was at a time when there were no phones. Informations were traded from person to person. The movement within the Fulanis made it relatively easy to pass information around, as such it wasn't hard for Bayero to learn that we had moved to Zango. My parents were happy with his visit and so was I. We learned that he had settled with his young wife a few kilometres from our homestead.

I was at that time in my final year in secondary school. We had grown into two different people, but we still had our childhood memories. We spent the whole afternoon reminiscing about some of our escapades.

Later, he told me he had a falling out with his parents. He fell in love and married a girl whom our people think is a taboo to marry. He had married a butchers daughter from town.

The relationship of the Fulani man and the butcher is a bitter sweet one; one raises the cow with so much love, the other buys it and butchers it. The herdman believes a butcher uses black magic to make a cow sick so that the fulani man has no choice but to sell it at a very low price.

This along with other things had created a rift between these two people such that a union between them is considered a taboo. It is believed that such union produce cursed offsprings that became the bane of their parents existence. Not that I believed in any of it of course, but I am aware of how much it will affect his new family.

The damage had already been done, but I let him in on how I feared for his future kids. He had shrugged in his nonchalant way and told me he had it all worked out.

"I will protect them." He said.

"What will happen if God forbid something happens to you and they are left to fend for themselves?" I asked, knowing it's not too late to convince him to end the marriage.

"I will raise them strong." He replied

It appeared he had everything figured out so I let him be. Even my parents frowned at his choice of wife when they learned of it. "They curse a lot, I don't like them." My mother had said. "And I thought he was such a good boy." My father had said, after he left.

In 1979, I got admitted into the prestigious Ahmadu Bello university to study Agricultural science. By that time, Zaria had become a second home for me. It was there I met my friends in persons of Abdul-Jabbar Kankia and Mohammad Kabir, both from Katsina.

Abdul-Jabbar's father passed away five years ago. He along with his siblings had inherited large sums of money. Mohammad Kabir's father is also very wealthy and spoils his son with cash. The largest sum of money I had ever managed to scrap from my father was ten naira, that too I had to bicker all through the holidays about school expenses.

Unlike me, they were very stylish. They were a cool duo I was so proud to be associated with. They dated the coolest girls on campus and soon we were guest at every party in and outside the campus. A whole new world I never knew existed was opened to me. I got caught up in its rhythm and lost myself in it.

A year before we graduated, we started planing. I had wanted to become an instructor in a good school in a big city, preferably Kaduna. Meanwhile my friends had other ideas up their sleeves.

We discussed and weighed all possibilities. In the end, it was decided that we pool in our resources and open a small factory that produces confectionery in Kano. According to them, Kano was the  happening place, and if you want to make tones of cash, Kano was where to go.

When I  heard the ridiculous amount of money, I told them I was out. That I couldn't raise such money no matter how I tried.

"What of your cows?" Mohammad asked

I explained that they are my father's, and even if he gives me some, it is for me to raise and nothing else.

"I can't understand you guys, you are so stingy when it comes to your cattle. What is the point of all the toiling if you can't sell it when you want to?" Mohammad added again.

I looked at Abdul-Jabbar in hope that he will understand but it looked like he was high on the influence of something.

"We sell it only when absolutely necessary. And it's normally one or two for that matter. " I tried to explain to him.

After that conversation, we never brought the subject up again. I started noticing that they will have covert meetings and when I tried to get involved, they told me it is about their sweet business...in other words, non of my business.

A week before we graduated, I had come up with a plan. I explained it to them and they couldn't hide their excitement as they welcomed me on board.

************************************
Hey guys, it's been a long time yeah? I apologise for the slow update, pls bear with me.

The initial plan was to finish the flashback in two chapters, but I realised it's impossible.

Unto the next chappie

BTW who misses our dear Biba?

Xoxo

Vote
Comment
And share